Monday, April 25, 2011

Porter turns 2!

It's hard to believe, but our baby just turned two! To celebrate the day, we hosted a Dr. Seuss-themed birthday party at our house. Porter is obsessed with Dr. Seuss books so it seemed appropriate to devote the day to his books.

Using the "Cat in the Hat" image and polka-dot pattern in one of my favorite color combinations of red and turquoise, the invitation set the tone for the party. Seussical rhymes were a must for inviting guests and I also incorporated a rhyme to tell guests that there would be an Easter egg hunt, since his birthday party would be over the Easter weekend.

I chose fun red envelopes for the invitation set and printed “Oh the places he’ll go, the things he’ll do, now that Porter will be two!” on the flap and my return address at the bottom of the envelope.

The envelope flap:

To dress up the envelopes and make them one-of-a-kind, I created handmade envelope liners from old Dr. Seuss books. I simply went to Half Price books to purchase some of Dr. Seuss' popular books, and then created a liner template.With a pencil, I used the template to draw the liner onto a page of a book, and then trimmed it out. I adhered the book page to the inside of the envelope with double-sided tape. And voila, each envelope had its own unique Dr. Seuss liner.

The custom envelope liners:

I created a "Porter I Am" banner (an obvious play on "Sam I Am") by printing each letter on 8.5" x 11" cardstock, rounding the corners of each and threading red sheer organza ribbon through.

For the party, I printed out popular Dr. Seuss quotes and affixed them around the house.

A crumb even too small for a mouse (from the Dr. Seuss book "How The Grinch Stole Christmas"):

I made “Green Eggs & Ham” by adding green dye to deviled eggs. The hot ham and swiss cheese sliders were a huge hit. I'm not sure if it was the Hawaiian buns or that they were drizzled with a tangy mustard and black poppy sauce, but they were gone fast! Recipe below.

A friend of mine, Brandie Davis, made the two cakes (her company is called More Than Cakes). She is amazingly talented and I recommend her to anyone! She hand drew all of the Dr. Seuss characters on the red velvet sheet cake. She also designed a Dr. Seuss hat cake. When you cut into it, the hat was striped with white cake and red velvet cake! Not only were the cakes beautiful but they were beyond delicious...so moist and flavorful.

The favor bags were filled with a home-made Dr. Seuss crayon case (purchased from Just Because Bowtique on http://www.etsy.com/), crayons, coloring book and play-doh:

Sources: By no means do I take full credit for the ideas found above. There are so many cool blogs out there with Dr. Seuss-themed parties. I recommend you search for them as I did and put your own take on it. Here's one blog that I loved. You'll also find the ham and cheese sliders recipe here: http://annies-eats.com/2010/06/28/andrews-second-birthday-party/